Note that using this technique we don’t actually set the attribute value; rather we return a default value, which can be subsequently applied to the attribute. Also notice that this is done only if the attribute does not already have a value (the check for null).

Actually setting an attribute value in a getter is not a recommended practice.

Attribute dependency

A common use case related to this topic is setting an attribute’s value based on the value of another related attribute. Consider for instance the use case where the employee’s commission should be set to a certain default value if the employee is part of the Sales department. Also consider the case where the employee’s commission should be cleared if the employee is not part of the Sales department. In addition to accomplishing this task with Groovy as stated earlier, it can also be implemented in the employee’s DepartmentId setter, i.e. in the setDepartmentId() method as it is shown below:

As you can see, there are a number of different ways for initializing your View object row attributes. Which one you choose depends on the specific use case at hand. It is common on large projects that a combination of all (and more) is used. Setting a standard approach could be appropriate in this case.